Reading For Beginners
by PoisoningPigeonsinthePark
Summary: When confronted by a very strange book about phrases and fables, Arthur conquers his fear of reading and acquires some dangerous knowledge along the way...
1. Things can only get better

**A/N: Hey there! This is based on a prompt that commanded all promptees (is that a word?) to pick up the nearest book to them and write Arthur's response to it. Jissai has also written one, called _When Arthur Meets JK Rowling & Richard Dawkins_, check it out, or even try the prompt yourself! It's suprisingly fun (as long as you're not right next to a really, horribly, awfully boring book. That would be bad)  
><strong>**Hope you like it - reviews are always much appreciated :) **

Arthur Pendragon sat down comfortably on his cushy bed, having cleared out all of those nasty word-boxes that he had found mysteriously appearing in his chambers over the past few days.  
>He refused to read them.<br>He told his father it was because they incited sorcery and the black arts.  
>He told his knights it was because he was too busy attempting to train them into something vaguely resembling an army.<br>He told Merlin it was none of his business.

Just as he buried his pretty, blonde face into his pillow there was a loud crashing sound, and another wretched book came crashing out of the sky, landing on the floor with an enormous thud.

Arthur poked the large, blue thing with his trusty sword.

The large, blue thing - that, if given the option, preferred to go by the name of, 'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable' - did nothing in response.

Arthur sheathed his sword, feeling a little silly.

He considered screaming, crying and stomping his feet; calling for the guards and demanding that the abomination be removed from his sight. But, on second thought, that seemed slightly childish.

So, instead, he picked the book up.

The first thing he noticed about it was that it was rather heavy, and the spine was withered, suggesting that the books owner perhaps consulted it regularly.  
>He flicked it open past the contents page.<br>"'What has this babbler to say?' is substantially the question of every one to whom a new book is offered."  
>Arthur frowned.<br>He was fairly confident that he could guarantee that he had never once, in his life, asked that question to himself when beginning a book.  
>He did, however, frequently think it when in conversation with Merlin.<p>

When Arthur began reading the strange book, he had little to no idea what it was talking about. Unbeknownst to Arthur, this was because he spoke in anachronistic 20th Century idioms, and the book he held in his hands was first published in 1870.  
>However, he soon found himself somewhat enthralled by the strange thing.<br>Lying on his bed, legs kicked up in the air, chin resting in his palms, he felt compelled to confess to the book his deepest darkest secret:  
>"I don't like reading."<br>The book seemed to understand him.  
>It seemed to invite Arthur in deeper, letting him look up definitions and derivations of words that hadn't been invented yet, and giving him the courage to develop his reading abilities to that of the average modern seven year old (or indeed the average seven year old in Camelot, because apparently even the Camelot peasantry can read).<p>

Merlin was surprised, to say the least, to see that Arthur was already awake when he entered his chambers the following morning.  
>But that was not what surprised Merlin the most.<br>"Are you reading, sire?"

"Yes, Merlin. I am the Crown Prince of Camelot, I do have some skills."

Merlin looked over to the bed, its mattress clearly untouched. "Have you been up all night reading?" the incredulity in his voice now evident.

Arthur growled in response.

Merlin couldn't quite believe it. He shook his head, trying to shake away the image of Arthur reading. It didn't work. "Gaius thinks he might have managed to sort out that problem with the books materialising in your room... Not that it seems to be much of a problem anymore... But still, Gaius wanted me to tell you... He wanted me to tell you..." Merlin screwed up his eyes in concentration, but it was no good.  
>Arthur's strange behaviour had completely thrown him.<p>

"Can you not relay a simple message, Merlin?"

"Oh! For heaven's sake! Do it yourself! I'm not your go-between!" Merlin exclaimed, as the tips of his ears gradually reddened.

Arthur paused, squinted at Merlin, and flipped through the pages of his book.  
>"Go-between," he announced. "A person who acts as an intermediary; one who acts as an agent between two parties. The central character of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between (1953) is a young boy who innocently carries messages between two doomed lovers, the daughter of an aristocratic family and a tenant farmer."<p>

Merlin frowned. "1953?"

There was no way this was going to end well.

"This thing calls itself a 'Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'. There's lots of stuff about us in here, did you know that? But they've spelt Gwaine's name wrong. And what's this about some Lady of The Lake being your mistress?"

Merlin smacked his forehead.

Nope.

There was definitely no way it was going to end well.


	2. Oops! I was wrong

**A/N: This goes out to everyone who wanted a continuation! :D Ooh... slight note about last chapter - there was a missing apostrophe. Biscuits to anyone who cares enough to go back and spot where it should have been. To those of you who thought your books couldn't be written about... hope I proved you wrong! I only used two of the books mentioned in reviews so far, but I might do some more chapters with other books mentioned, if anyone is interested, and if the plot bunnies strike! Reviews make me dance like a grandad at a wedding. PPitP out!**

There was an uncertain knock on the door of the library, prompting Geoffrey of Monmouth to sit up from his desk with a surprised start, and hide his Nintendo DS in the sleeve of his robes.

_And why_, I hear you asking, _was he in possession of such an artefact?_

He had rescued it from the flames of the great purge. (But Shh… Don't tell Uther! It's a secret.)

Geoffrey coughed uncertainly. "Ahem… Come in," he frowned to himself. _Who on earth could possibly be coming to the library at this time of day? _He had thought he was safe from the general populace of Camelot when he'd hidden away in there with his lunchtime snack on a bright sunny day; most people didn't want to come and spend their midday meal with a stingy librarian, and that was just the way he liked it.

Prince Arthur Pendragon, of all people, stuck his head sheepishly around the door.

"How may I be of service, my lord?" Geoffrey inquired, after getting over the shock of seeing Arthur in such close proximity to reading material without coming out in a rash.

"I was wondering if you might help me with something…" he muttered bashfully, and then he did something Geoffrey would never, not in a million years, have expected.

He walked into the room, and revealed that he had hidden, behind his back, a book.

A big book.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, if he had been an easily startled man, might well have laid down and died of shock right then and there.

"It's this word: '_adulterous_'," Arthur muttered, pointing at a part of the page. "I was just wondering if you could tell me what it meant…"

Geoffrey of Monmouth flushed bright pink and bit his lip, trying to avoid giggling, which was not something he was often prone to doing.

"Oh…" Arthur mumbled, sounding slightly disappointed. "It's alright if you don't know, I suppose… I just thought… There's another word I'm not sure about: _protégé_, can you explain that one, or do you not know what that means, either?"

Now in this case, Geoffrey of Monmouth could truthfully say that he did not know what 'protégé' meant.

"I think I might have a solution to this, my lord," Geoffrey stated, gesturing to a book on his desk.

Arthur squinted at the strange book beneath Geoffrey's hand. "Zelda gaming guide?" he queried, looking bemused.

Geoffrey scooped the guide off the desk, hiding it in his special drawer with his replica Mario doll and _Cooking Mama_ instruction guide.

"What's _gaming_?"

"Something librarians do… Horribly tedious, I'm afraid. You wouldn't like it all. Now, you were asking about 'protégé'?"

"Yes…" Arthur nodded, returning to the _Brewer's_ in his hands, tapping the entry entitled '**Lancelot of the Lake **or **Lancelot du Lac**' with his thumb.

"Fortunately for you, I have just the thing," Geoffrey happily nudged the right book this time.

"The Oxford English Dictionary and Thesaurus?"

"Yes…" Geoffrey rolled his eyes slightly. "Is it necessary for you to read _everything_ aloud?"

Arthur held back a few stray tears, remembering those difficult days as a young prince, when he had been scolded and re-scolded for his inability to tell the difference between 'red' and 'read', which had simply been embarrassing, being a Pendragon…

"No…" he mumbled sorrowfully.

"This is a _dictionary_. I rescued it from the wreckage of books from your bedroom," Geoffrey shook his head. "Such a tragic waste… I think it's previous owner must have used it quite well," he remarked, stroking the withered spine. "It really is a very good idea to write all of these words down, you know."

Arthur looked at the _Brewer's_ in his hands. "Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. Perhaps we should do it for our own words?"

"I suppose we could…" Geoffrey of Monmouth looked dreamily out into the distance. "The world's _first_ dictionary."

In 1784, hundreds of years in the future, Dr Samuel Johnson turned in his grave.

"So… Does that book have the meaning of _every_ word written in it?"

Geoffrey frowned. "No, not every word. It appears to have deemed many of our words 'archaic', and not worth defining, which is a little high-handed, if you ask me."

"Can I borrow that dictionary, Mr of Monmouth?" Arthur asked, having completely forgotten what it was he had come to the library to ask Geoffrey about.

Geoffrey raised his eyebrows. "You want to _borrow _a _book_? From a _library_? What an extraordinary idea… Well, I suppose…" he continued, withering under Arthur's puppy dog stare. "If you return it to me in good condition…"

"Awooga!" Arthur exclaimed joyously, for no obvious reason, grabbing the book and preparing to dash off. "Wait… Geoffrey?"

"Yes, my lord?"

"Did you know that you are in this book?"

"Which book, my lord?"

"_My_ book," Arthur stated proudly, pointing at his _Brewer's_. "There's a whole lot of stuff about Merlin… It says you wrote about 'The Life of Merlin'. Why would you do that? Merlin's just a servant, and a useless one, at that."

(We must bear in mind that whatever strange plot device has been placed on Arthur by the writers of the show that forces him to be totally oblivious to all evidence of Merlin's powers, no matter how compelling, extends into the world of fanfiction, and so the words 'enchanter' and 'necromancy' in that same extract simply went over his head.)

"It says you write all kinds of things about…"

"That's enough!" Geoffrey exclaimed. Shuffling the papers on his desk to better conceal the book on currently labelled as '_Geoff's Diary_', that would one day become known as '_Historia Regum Britanniae_'. "I have no idea what you are talking about!"

Arthur shrugged.

"Oh well. Thanks for the dictionary!" With that, he beamed and skipped off, leaving Geoffrey of Monmouth re-evaluating all of his life choices.

**.**

"_Mer_lin!" bellowed a disembodied voice that Merlin would recognise anywhere.

The secret warlock looked around him, trying to catch a glimpse of his master.

"_Mer_lin! I'm over here you incompetent buffoon!"

Merlin eventually saw Arthur's boots poking out over the top of some stairs, and headed over in that direction, trying not to look suspicious, which he had got rather good at in the course of his daily activities.

When Merlin found Arthur, he was downright shocked to see him with yet _another_ book in his royal lap. "Are you reading? Again?"

Arthur shot Merlin a look of friendly disdain, which ought to be impossible, but which the prince had down to a fine art. "Yes, _Mer_lin. It's called a _dictionary_, it defines words."

Merlin shrugged, and sat down on the step next to his master.

Arthur raised an eyebrow, not looking up from his book. "You can't sit there, Merlin."

"Why not?"

"You should be sitting beneath me."

"Because I'm a servant?"

"Yes."

Merlin huffed, and slid down a few steps, deliberately landing on Arthur's foot when he reached his destination.

"It's not in here," Arthur said eventually.

The expectant pause that followed suggested Arthur wanted Merlin to respond.

"What's not in there?"

"Dollop head. It's not in here."

"Yes… Well…" Merlin shrugged. "I told you it was idiomatic."


	3. Strange things are happening to me

**A/N: Sorry it's been a while :) B****et you thought I'd given up, eh? Not Pigeons. I'm trying to use all of the books people have suggested... and as a result Camelot is becoming a strange place. (Stranger than usual, that is). Hope you enjoy it, and don't get too confuzzled!**

Arthur sat in his room frowning.

He was rereading that same passage again and again and again, and yet he could make no more sense of it.

He held his birth certificate up to his face and scrutinised it, yelling out in frustration at his Brewer's.

"My real name is _not_ Artorius!" he insisted. "My name is and always has been Arthur Pendragon, it says so right here!" he pointed at his birth certificate, which confirmed his demented ramblings. "What do you have to say to that?"

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable had nothing to say to that, as it turned out.

Arthur stuck his tongue out at Brewer's.

Brewer's didn't care.

Arthur scowled. He was going to have to make sense of this one way or another. He stormed out of his chambers with an angry, _don't-mess-with-me-Merlin_ expression on his face, and walked smack into the warlock in question.

"Ow!"

"Shut up, Merlin."

"Oh dear. Did someone get out of the wrong side of bed this morning?"

Arthur was about to berate Merlin when something occurred to him. "Did you know that Julius Caesar believed that?"

"Believed what?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Believed in all of that getting-out-of-bed-the-wrong-side nonsense. He was very superstitious about it."

"Oh. Where'd you learn that?"

Arthur tapped the Brewer's tucked under his arm. "This book comes in very useful. Do you know what else I can do with it?"

Merlin looked expectantly at Arthur.

Arthur clobbered Merlin over the head with it.

"Ow! That's the second time in seconds you've injured me!"

"I suggest you don't mess with me, Merlin. My name means bear."

Merlin could think of too many clever things to say in response to that (most of which would get him in trouble) to know what to do.

"Come on, Merlin. We need to go and find Geoffrey of Monmouth. He has some explaining to do."

Merlin nodded, and followed along.

They stomped down the corridor, and were just about to reach the turn that would lead them to the library when they recognised a train of lavender dress trailing along the floor in the distance that signified the presence of a certain handmaiden.

Merlin winked at Arthur.

This earned him another clobbering over the head with the Brewer's.

Merlin was told to naff off, and thought it best to do so promptly.

"Guinevere," drawled Arthur, trying to lean nonchalantly on a pillar and slipping a little.

She looked up from some papers she had been reading and blinked at him in confusion as he appeared to be having extreme difficulty standing up straight.

"I was wondering if I might have a word with you."

She nodded.

"Do you know what the word paramour means?"

Gwen blushed. _Was he asking her out?_

"I believe so, my lord…"

Her reaction told him all that he needed to hear. He was absolutely crestfallen, and wanted to slink away from her in shame, but felt the need to ask, "Do you have any feelings for Lancelot, by any chance?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Not especially. What makes you ask?"

"Oh, nothing. Nothing," he smiled. "Have a nice day."

She shot him a look that said she knew he was up to something, but then swiftly returned to whatever it was she had been so engaged in before, and scurried away.

Arthur looked down smugly at his Brewer's. "Wrong again," he told it. "Tragic loves? Psh."

**.**

Gwen looked down at the Official SQA (Scottish Qualifications Agency) Past Papers with answers, Higher History 2006-2009, and scribbled something in the margins with a pencil.

It might have been an odd thing for a maid of Camelot to have been reading.

Frankly, it was odd for a _maid_ of Camelot to have been reading at all, but Gwen had had enough of people pointing that out.

She'd found the thing amidst the books and papers being cleared out of Arthur's room. Apparently some evil sorcerer had decided to torture the poor prince by pelting him with reading material from throughout the ages. That was truly wicked.

What she'd found most intriguing had been the topic on Women's Suffrage. As a woman who had been raised to be meek and docile, it had honestly never occurred to her that women ought to be treated as equal to men.

But it had occurred to her now.

And it was not going to un-occur.

At first she'd been horrified by the tactics of the Suffragettes. How on earth they could believe that such violence and mania was acceptable or feminine was beyond her. She could not fathom how one poured acid in a post box without spilling even a little bit of it on one's skirt, and she did not have all that many skirts. She'd probably spend an entire night mending the stupid thing, and she was really fed up of sewing.

No, at first her vote had been with NUWSS, the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, who should probably have put someone a little more creative in charge of their name. They wrote letters, and made petitions and that all seemed far more sound and reasonable to her.

However, these women had been aided by circumstance. They'd had a world war (not that she fully understood quite how one went about organising one of those) to work on the home front and prove to the men that they were valuable and needed to be listened to.

There were no wars going on at the moment.

Morgana and Morgause had been annoyingly quiet from wherever it was they'd skulked off to.

No new magical threats had emerged recently; they had passed through those few horrible months every year when the city seemed to be constantly plagued with danger, and now they were faced with the calm, boring lull of everyday life.

Gwen could hardly start a war herself.

She'd tried writing a disgruntled anonymous letter to the council.

It had been laughed at.

The Suffragettes were starting to sound more and more appealing…

**.**

Arthur scowled at Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was too busy trying to get to the next level to notice.

"You!"

Geoffrey jumped to his feet and something shiny clattered to the floor.

"What have you been saying about me?" demanded Arthur, slamming the Brewer's in front of him and pointing. "It says you've been writing fabulous things about me, that means you've been making things up, doesn't it? I could have your hanged for that!"

Geoffrey gulped and checked the page. It did indeed say that.

"No, Sire. You misunderstand. It's a modern use of the word fabulous, it means good. I've been telling everyone how marvellous you are. You're fabulous!"

Arthur narrowed his eyes. He was about to make some comment in response when a loud _thud!_ at the window interrupted him.

Geoffrey and Arthur shared a glance.

"What was that?"

They marched over to the window and peered into the courtyard, where Gwen was standing, looking slightly mad, lobbing eggs at the windows of the castle and heckling any passing knights and noblemen.

Arthur coughed.

"I probably ought to go and deal with that."

Arthur zoomed out of the library and hastened down towards the courtyard, not really looking where he was going.

"Ow! Arthur! That's the third time today!"

Arthur scowled. "Not now, Merlin. We have bigger problems." Arthur stormed off.

Merlin returned to his fascinating new book, The Gormenghast Trilogy, and his mind wandered off in dangerous directions.

For once, it seemed, Arthur was right.

They did have bigger problems.


End file.
